Up at 8 - hoping that it would be earlier but I had been up for a couple of hours in the night scratching at my hundreds of mosquito bits! I used some tea tree cream from Mirran and they calmed down some what. The mosquitoes round here are terrible - there has been lots of rain and the area is really close to the lakes. I had put repellent on by they had bitten through my biking shorts!!! I had about 20 bites on each bum cheek!I left Peter and Mirran's at 10ish after a chilled morning - breakfast together, checking out Peter's bikes and photos with everyone.
I took the scenic route from their house. It was spitting with rain but a good ride. The land round here reminds me of the UK. The scenic route is much hillier than the main highway but lovely. I made good time and stopped off in Bruthen, a very quint little rural town, for supplies and fish and chips :-) I ended up chatting with some motor cyclists from Wales that had been riding round for a few months having shipped their bikes to Aus. Strange to hear a Welsh accent.
Left Bruthen and headed up the Bruthen-Buchan Road - surprisingly towards Buchan. The road climbs for about 30km and then goes down into Buchan. Just as I get to the top of the climb and start going down hill, I hear a big click and my bike starts going all over the place. I slammed on my breaks to see what had happened. 2 of my pokes had snapped and the back wheel had cracked in 2 places!!! Oh dear. It was not the sort of thing that I could fix and then continue on riding. The wheel was not running true at all. It was a shame as I was enjoying the ride.
I got a lift very quickly with a lovely couple going back to Lakes Entrance. On the way I confirmed on the net on my phone that there was a bike shop there. It turned out that it had recently shut and so the lovely people gave me a lift back into to Bairnsdale (where I passed through yesterday).
Garry the owner at the bike shop very generously said that he could get a new wheel built for me by the end of the day (it was 4pm by now) but that he might have to stay late. He said it would not be ready till atleast 6. As I was still psyched up for the long ride ahead of me today to get another 70km further on, I needed to get rid of some energy and so I went for a run for an hour and a half along the track by the river in Bainsdale. It was a lovely route.
It turned out that Garry was really busy with customers all afternoon and so when I got back at 6ish he had not started. I watched him build a new wheel and he also sorted out my gears etc. He is a racing cyclist himself and when we were trying to fix a problem which was causing a strange noise he took the bike for a spin down the pavement. It was very funny - he was all over the place and nearly hit a lamp post because there is so much weight on the bike. It handles totally different to a racing bike. When I checked out his website - it turns out that he is an Australian National Champion! Cool.
Gary Jackson (www.rivieracycles.com.au/aboutme) is an excellent bike mechanic and I would highly recommend his bike shop (Riviera Cycles) to anyone :-)
I phoned Peter and Mirran (the people I stayed with yesterday) to let them know what had happened and they invited me to stay tonight again. They are only 14km down the road from Bairnsdale and so it was perfect. I left the bike shop at 8ish and biked to Peter's for 9ish where they kindly fed me again.
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